Thursday, April 26, 2007

When special schools are included, 798,210 pupils in England's state schools do not speak English as their first language. About one in seven children at primary school in England and one in 10 at secondary school speak a language other than English at home. The figures come from the government's annual school census.

At primary level, 21.9% of pupils are from ethnic minorities, up from 20.6% last year. In secondary schools, the figure is 17.7%, up from 16.8% in 2006.

Anyone who does not describe themselves as being white British is defined as an ethnic minority in the census.

Sunny has more on the Handsworth Park trouble at Pickled Politics, and the BBC report three remanded on attempted murder charges.Amandeep Singh, 31, of Walsall, Avtar Singh Thandi, 28, from Birmingham, and a 17-year-old from Smethwick are also accused of violent disorder.

At Tong high school in Bradford, the general consensus seems to be that the words "asylum seeker" and "illegal" automatically go together.

It's a misapprehension that teacher Hayley Clacey is keen to debunk, which is one of the reasons why she has invited local charity Retas (Refugee Training and Advisory Service) to the school. Throughout the day, refugees from Russia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon will work with children and class teachers to explain why people have to flee their own countries and what life is really like for those seeking refuge in the UK.

Bradford has two BNP councillors and 17 more candidates from the party seeking election next week. This political climate is something of which the school is keenly aware. With a catchment drawn primarily from two poor, predominantly white council estates, teachers are using the freedom of their hour-a-week tutorial programme to combat racism.

Holme Wood being one of them - Holme Wood and Buttershaw seemed to be the home of the roughest 'lads'. Twenty year back when I lived in God's Own City they certainly weren't big multiculturalists.

Influencing the voters of tomorrow while they're still young has also become a priority in Burnley, which, together with Oldham, experienced violent race-related disturbances in the summer of 2001. Around £250m has been spent on a total overhaul of Burnley's education system, with entire schools being closed, demolished, restructured and rebuilt.

Because of the way school catchment areas had been set historically, he explains, Burnley's secondary schools had been either overwhelmingly white or overwhelmingly black. The white schools got good results and were oversubscribed, and the minority ethnic schools got poor ones. All this is changing, partly as a result of a report published last summer on the reasons for the disturbances.

"The county council is completely reorganising the schools, including the catchment areas, so there is a better mix of pupils," says Townsend. "Five new schools have just opened and we've got rid of all the old ones so the kids now have the chance to grow up together. The BNP are latching on to that and calling it forced integration. Of course you can never force integration, but you have to give people who would be open to that the chance to experience it."

Of course you can never force integration. Just close all the schools and open new, integrated ones. They can always go private, can't they ?

(Having one child at private secondary and two at State secondary, it's interesting to see that the private school is much more integrated than the State one, where the Asian Muslim kids form a separate group in the playground. At Speech Day they all sat together. Admittedly the state kids all live close to each other and their dads drive taxis, whereas at the private school they live miles apart and their parents are NHS consultants).

I've explained before why this kind of thing is only likely to delay, rather then stop, what I fear will be a split of of British politics on racial lines.

Arresting BNP members, Guardian exposes, BBC undercover documentaries, forced multiculturalism in schools are in the long term ineffective. Unless some kind of leftist police state comes into being.

There is always that possibility, I suppose. I'm just not sure that they could administer it competently enough to be effective !

PS - Sir Andrew Green's essay on the 'Britain a nation of immigrants' spin, "The Great Deception", is here.

Mr Kennedy, who is a genetics student at Aberdeen University, said: "I said I was not a police officer, I said I am a stripper. They followed me into the bar, watched the show, then asked me to go back to the station. It was all quite friendly. When I went back later they said they were going to charge me. I have spoken to two solicitors and they do not know if it will go to court."

A spokesman for the Grampian force said the charges were in connection with wearing a police uniform and equipment in a public place.

A policeman who threw away details of more than 14 crimes and invented excuses as to why they should not be investigated has escaped jail. Matthew Turner carried out the shirking campaign at Falkirk Police Station between November 2004 and August 2005. The crimes included two assaults, a housebreaking, three thefts and eight incidents of vandalism. Turner admitted 14 charges of wilful neglect of duty when he appeared at Falkirk Sheriff Court last month. On Thursday, he was ordered to carry out 225 hours community service. The court heard he was only the third police officer in Scotland in recent memory to face a criminal court on similar charges.

Fortunately his dereliction of duty has been discovered and the law enforced.

The court heard the alleged crimes he had wrongly marked "closed" were all re-investigated. In one case a suspect was sent a warning letter but none of the cases were taken to court.

I suppose they may have been harder to investigate so long after the event.

"that summed up what was at stake in that testing time between the fall of France and Pearl Harbor when Britannia and her lion cubs stood alone. Its sentiment matched the challenge posed by Churchill: Does England mean as much to you as England means to me? If it does, we can press on, and win."

The piece reminded me of the deportations from Occupied Jersey in WWII. Many of those deported were to die in prison camps.

Most islanders hoped that that the Nazis would be defeated and that life in Jersey would return to normal. This hope became fervent after 1942, when orders came through for the authorities to deport 2,000 people from the island for internment on the European mainland.

Top of the list of those to be deported were Jews, ex-servicemen, and those born on Britain's mainland. On the day that these people were deported, a group of islanders went down to watch the ship depart. As the deportees sailed away they struck up a chorus of 'There'll Always be an England'. From across the waves they could hear the deportees joining in.

As Steyn says, the song :

"belongs to a pre-ironic England. On November 25th 1941 off the coast of Alexandria HMS Barham was torpedoed by a German U-boat during a visit to the battleship by Vice-Admiral Henry Pridham-Wippell. The ship lurched to its port side, the commanding officer was killed, and the vice-admiral found himself treading oil-perfumed water surrounded by the ship's men and far from rafts. To keep their morale up, he led them in a rendition of "There'll Always Be An England". The 31,000-ton Barham sank in less than four minutes, the largest British warship destroyed by a U-boat the course of the war. But 449 of its crew of 1,311 survived. "There'll Always Be An England" was written for that England."

Not the last time either. Here's another pre-ironic song that young Britons of eighty years back would have learned at school :

"Sons of the sea,All British born,Sailing the ocean,Laughing foes to scorn.They may build their ships, my lads,And think they know the game;But they can't beat the boys of the bulldog breedWho made old England's name !"

And here it is in context. Prisoners of the Japanese, their (Japanese) ship has been torpedoed and hundreds are drowning :

Not far from us was an upturned lifeboat and seated astride it were many Jap officers, still clutching their briefcases and with their swords dangling from their sides. What a pretty sight to see and our lads did not hesitate in expressing their feelings; they made rude gestures to them and called them all the dirtiest names under the sun. Our boys were in good spirits now and someone suggested we cheer the bastards with a song, which we did by singing 'Rule Britannia' and 'Sons of the Sea' and despite our condition we had put them to shame.

There was, however, one burst of enthusiasm, as we started on our journey, which struck me as being spontaneous, and splendid, and thoroughly English. Outside the harbor we were met by our guardians, a fleet of destroyers which was to give us safe convoy across the Channel. The moment they saw them the men broke forth into prolonged cheering, and there were glad shouts of —

And they did. They sang with a spirit of exaltation which Englishmen rarely betray, and which convinced me how nearly the sea and England's position as Mistress of the Seas touch the Englishman's heart of hearts.

It was a confession of faith. On the sea England can't be beaten. Tommy believes that with his whole soul, and on this occasion he sang with all the warmth of religious conviction.

The main item on Today's 7 am news was to the effect that "Peter Halliday is to be sentenced today after pleading guilty to abusing choirboys over a period of five years. But the Church of England knew that he had admitted the offences 17 years ago." An in-depth report (RealAudio) follwed at 7.35.

Quite right too that they should be het up (maybe not le mot juste) about it. Only the other day I was bemoaning the dreadful record of both the CoE and Catholic churches when it came to dealing with dodgy divines, who have tended to be quietly moved to another parish as the complaints come in.

John Humphrys even invited Dr Gladfelder, author of such seminal works as "Plague Spots: Deviance and the Body in the Writings of John Cleland" to give a potted history of homosexual rights in the UK, interrupting Dr Gladfelder at the mention of Roy Jenkins with 'that great reforming Home Secretary'.

The actual document discovered by Dr Gladfelder is called 'Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplified'. It is available to Project Muse subscribers. I'd be interested to see a copy.

Perhaps the BBC, so disturbed by people who abuse choirboys, should check out the definition of 'pederasty'.

... the companies reached their objective with a combined strength of 40, plus 30 wounded; the Gurkhas were pinned down, also with heavy casualties, and there was little food or water. As the only medic present, and with no resources but a first aid haversack containing some bandages, a bit of morphia and scissors, Lance-Corporal Hazle became, in effect, the regimental medical officer, according to his regiment's history.

Working in cramped conditions under constant mortar fire and artillery bombardment, as the empty canisters from smoke bombs caused further casualties as they fell among them, Hazle fearlessly exposed himself to continual fire over six days, dressing wounds, and carrying out an amputation.

He was a stretcher bearer, not a qualified medic. And that was "Nutty" Hazle's second DCM. The first was awarded for continuing to treat wounded of the 5th Indian Division despite having half his face shot away.

Picture from the Times obit.

There's a line in Solzhenitsyn's novel August 1914, in which the author regrets that so few photographs exist of the conscripts. I paraphrase :

"There are no photographs of them, and this is all the more regrettable because since then the composition of our nation has changed, faces have changed and no lens will ever rediscover those honest, trusting eyes, those placid, bearded faces, those relaxed and unselfish expressions. Our whole national character has changed since then."

The Brits of 1939 weren't at all like Russian peasants. But I know what he meant, and feel the same regret at the passing of the last heroic generation of Britons, none of whom would ever have described themselves as such.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

So sayeth Alex of Recess Monkey, who has a CiF post up about the BNPs use (if any) of the social networking software Facebook.

I disagreed and gave reasons as best I could. Sorry for regular readers if I repeat myself. A lot of this is cut'n'paste.

"Alex - you really are urinating into a Force 10 here. All this well-meant stuff is unlikely to have the effect you want.

Let me attempt to explain why.

In 2001 the Observer reported a demographer (who I’m presuming with zero evidence was David Coleman of Oxford University) as saying that on current trends for immigration, emigration and birthrate, whites would be a minority in Britain by 2100. I’m not sure if he’d taken into account the million-odd Poles who have come over since EU enlargement, and I’m not sure talking of ‘whites’ is helpful either. I prefer the term ‘Native Britons’, which distinguishes the indigenous people from Albanians, Poles, Frenchmen and other Eastern Europeans.

Since then immigration has increased dramatically, and emigration of natives likewise. Brits are leaving at a rate not seen for 100 years. More than half the babies born in London and 20% of those born in England have mothers who were themselves born overseas.

The latest forecast is that "on present trends, by 2073, the majority population of this country will either have migrated here, or be the child or grandchild of parents who did so. No past wave of immigration has ever come anywhere near having that kind of consequence."

Two points here.

First, it may be that the demographers and the ONS people are fabricating the stats. But people on the Left don't seem to want to discuss them. The absence of any attempt at rebuttal is itself IMHO significant.

The second is that apparently this change is not worthy of debate or discussion. The Observer said that "It would be the first time in history that a major indigenous population has voluntarily become a minority, rather than through war, famine or disease."

Most people on the Left are instinctively sympathetic to an indigenous people who find their land occupied by strangers. Those who resist are heroes. Native Americans, the native Irish, Aborigines, Palestinians, the Indians of South America. All these peoples may have ended up belonging to much richer nations as a result of immigration, but they didn't necessarily appreciate the favour.

I cannot understand what's so special about the English, that they, uniquely among the nations and races of the earth, are apparently expected to acquiesce in their own replacement.

Most people don't spend their time studying ONS stats. They just notice the changes in their area, or when they visit a city. The problem is that those who are concerned about immigration, and who feel that social cohesion demands an immediate stop to immigration while those who are already here integrate, have an extremely limited voting choice. None of the three major parties have the slightest intention of halting mass immigration. Because to do so would be racist.

The native British are a demoralised bunch, and have generally reacted to immigration by voting with their feet rather than for people who like Odin and dislike Jews. But as the incomer population grows, the English are finding that there’s nowhere (emigration apart) to run to. This may be why the BNPs vote of nearly 5% in the 2004 Euro elections was around four times their 1999 vote.

This trend may not continue - as children of all cultures grow up together they may unite and reject communal politics.

But Bradford, Oldham, Burnley aren’t terribly hopeful pointers. It seems to me more likely that as the Native Brit population declines, and natives become the minority in more and more areas, politics will almost inevitably become split on ethnic lines, as for example in Fiji. The demographics are still pointing all one way, the Tories are unlikely to to make major changes if and when they do ever win power.

So in 20 years or so there'll be a nativist British party, representing a substantial proportion, if not a majority, of the native English. The only question is what the name of that party will be.

At the moment, for good or ill, the only party that seems to many natives to be for 'people like us' is the BNP.

So Alex, as long as demographic change on this scale continues, banning the BNP from Facebook, harassing and sacking its activists, "duffing them up in the street" (copyright B.Bragg) are in the long run not going to make a difference.

The BNP may have many idiotic ideas. They may also have some very nasty ones at the heart of their ideology and among their senior people.

But that isn't why people are voting for them. The native Brits haven't suddenly become swivel-eyed types with obsessions about black IQ, Jewish conspiracies and the other things that make a BNP ideologues eyes light up. The English don't do fascism. They just don't want to be a minority in their own country.

UPDATE - Alex Hilton's response :

"Labantall - you're the scariest person to have commented so far. Would you mind telling me what a native Briton is to you? Picts, Celts, Norse, Angles, Britons, Scots, Danes, Normans, Saxons, Gaels, Huguenots? But you know this. You know that you could pick a different date in history and find a different group of outsiders to hate."

makes it pretty clear that the last thing he wants is to think about is why people are voting BNP. And the combination of ad hominem and wild assumption implies that he's operating on the principle noted by the historian AJP Taylor. Discussing the Katyn massacre of Polish Army officers (blamed at the time by the Poles on the Russians and by the Russians on the Germans) he said words to the effect of "as the Russians have discovered, the best way of sustaining an argument is never to put any evidence forward to defend it".

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

In what could be a parody of core Labour support, the Indie interview ten people who used their first votes for Labour in 1997.

The ten are - press officer (actually PR), solicitor, teacher, lawyer, "urban regeneration consultant", company director (in PR), marketing "consultant", PR "consultant" (his firm do work for the Government), artist, freelance designer. They all appear to have been either at university, in their last year of school before university, or in a gap year before university. Half would still vote Labour, three don't know, one Lib Dem, one Green.

Three PRs and a marketer, two lawyers. The People's Party sure does appeal to the horny handed sons of toil. No wonder Labour want half the population to take a degree.

They're all 28, 29, 30, 31. None have children. None are married.

What bothered them ?

Law and order has upset two - not absence thereof, but Blair's 'move to the right'. One of them inevitably is the solicitor. Iraq - three. Impossibility of buying a house - two. Peter Vardy (a wealthy Christian) sponsoring academies - one. The target/initiative driven teaching culture - one - the teacher. Civil liberties - one.

People like these are pretty much Labour's core demographic nowadays. Someone who'd been in a timewarp for the last twenty-five years might have looked for Labour first-time voters among those who left school at sixteen. The Indie knew better.

One touching little postscript - the teacher, who sounds like a decent chap, gives us this vignette.

I come from a fairly hard working-class background ... although we talk now about the "spirit of the times", a lot of my friends didn't actually vote. They were concentrating on the next football match. I'd always felt a bit of an outsider among them, and was looking for a more cosmopolitan lifestyle. I suppose that's what attracted me to New Labour, too.

In John Braine's late 50s period piece 'Room At The Top', the visit to the Conservative Club with Susan's father is like a rite of middle-class passage for the ambitious working class antihero Joe Lampton. Forty years on, the Labour Party is the choice for a young Welshman seeking a "more cosmopolitan lifestyle".

I missed Mr Cuthbertson's response at Conservative Home to Matthew Parris' claim that Tony Blair will leave Britain "a happier country than he found it".

One of the comments, by sim, struck me.

I have canvassed extensively for the Conservative Party since 1987 - I have seen anger, enthusiasm, opposition and apathy.

What I had never seen until the 2005 GE was an incredible number of ordinary people saying either that they wished they could leave the UK, or that they were glad to be old so they wouldn't live to see more decline in the country they loved.

Time and again, voters said they didn't feel at home in their own land anymore - and this was not just a reference to immigration, which is very visible here.

Mr Parris vision of 'a kinder, gentler' nation is echoed in yesterday's Caroline Wyatt Today report (Realaudio) on the French first round results, where Segolene Royale's 'gentler France' is contrasted with Sarkozy's 'brutal' rhetoric. No bias there then.

After his ordination in 1979 he was appointed assistant curate at a church in Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, where he is accused of assaulting a 15-year-old. When the boy’s mother informed the police and church authorities, Mr Smith was moved to another parish, eventually becoming vicar of St John the Evangelist Church in Clevedon, Somerset.

Both Catholic and CoE churhes have been guilty far too often of simply shuffling an accused priest elsewhere, often to continue assaults.

Younis Tsouli, from Shepherds Bush, West London, was born in Morocco but was granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain two months before his arrest. Tariq al-Daour was born in the United Arab Emirates of Palestinian parents and became a British citizen in May 2004.

Cheers to the Home Office for those particular decisions.

Is it not a bit strange for a Bullingdon Boy to be calling for more civility ?

The General Teaching Council investigates unacceptable behaviour.

- a classroom being vandalised during a break time, with windows smashed and glass thrown around the room, books destroyed and desks overturned;

- boys openly using mobile phones to download pornography, accessing obscene websites on school computers and making serious sexual suggestions to her;

- a pupil accusing her of hitting him, and threatening to report her to the police and sue her;

- having to stand guard by the classroom door to prevent students walking out.

Monday, April 23, 2007

(Tune: Men of Harlech) What's the use of wearing braces ? Vests and pants and boots with laces ? Spats and hats you buy in places Down the Brompton Road ? What's the use of shirts of cotton ? Studs that always get forgotten ? These affairs are simply rotten, Better far is woad.

Woad's the stuff to show men. Woad to scare your foemen. Boil it to a brilliant hue And rub it on your back and your abdomen. Ancient Briton ne'er did hit on Anything as good as woad to fit on Neck or knees or where you sit on. Tailors you be blowed !!

Romans came across the channel All dressed up in tin and flannel Half a pint of woad per man'll Dress us more than these. Saxons you can waste your stitches Building beds for bugs in britches We have woad to clothe us which is Not a nest for fleas

Romans keep your armours. Saxons your pyjamas. Hairy coats were made for goats, Gorillas, yaks, retriever dogs and llamas Climb up Snowdon with your woad on, Never mind if you get rained or blowed on Never want a button sewed on. Go it Ancient B's !!

UPDATE2 - Moved to the top. A commenter chalked me off for not crediting the writer. All the versions I'd ever seen credited it as 'Anon', but I guessed it was somewhere between Edwardian times and the 20s, as my mother learned it as a child in the early 30s. Wikipedia credited it as an anonymous Scout song, but this Mudcat thread pointed the way. John Moulden wrote :

Sorry to return to the point after so many flights of fancy but my copy (actually I have three of different ages) of the Hackney Scout Song Book (first edition 1921 - this one is the ninth edition (1959) and their contents may have differed) attributes the song to W Hope Jones of whom I know nothing but for whom I will look. [Note the avoidance of terminal prepositions.] The copyright acknowledgment thanks him but makes no reference to a publisher.

Malcolm Douglas added :it seems that W. Hope Jones was a master at Eton, and wrote the song, c.1921, for the college's Boy Scout troop. ("Gilwell Camp Fire Song Book" and comments on the web.)

At this point a bell rang furiously in the Laban cranium. Wasn't Mr Hope Jones one of the Eton masters who takes the Scout Troop on the ill-fated expedition to Wailing Well in the MR James story ?

He certainly seems the right man. In the Wailing Well Notes we learn that "Known at Eton as "Hojo", William Hope Jones was a maths teacher noted for his eccentricity; he was feared among the Scouts for his loud, stentorian singing." In the story "You cannot be surprised to hear that Mr. Hope Jones added a special verse to each of his songs, in commendation of Arthur Wilcox".

A man was today fighting for life in hospital after being repeatedly stabbed as Vaisakhi (Punjabi New Year, also the founding of the Sikh khalsa) celebrations in Birmingham erupted into violence.

More than a dozen other people were also injured in the trouble which began in Handsworth Park and spread to surrounding streets.

A fleet of nine ambulances were sent to scene, and paramedics gave first aid to victims as the violence continued for more than four hours yesterday.

Other officers were forced to close the park, in Holly Road, and surrounding roads and urged people to stay away from the area.

An estimated 100,000 people were enjoying the event when the violence started at 3pm and the ambulance service was still receiving 999 calls more than four hours later.

The stabbed man, who has not been named but is in his mid 50s, was today critically ill in hospital.

The other victims, some with very serious injuries, were treated at hospitals across the city.

Gangs ? Religious trouble ? "Intra-communal" ? Four hours of incidents isn't just one group of youth not getting on with another group. Anyone know what's going on ?

UPDATE - Sunny and Kulvinder in the comments at Pickled Politics say it's probably gang-related - said gangs (Shere Punjab and Babbar Khalsa - named after the Khalistan seperatist terror group) having previous of various sorts.

UPDATE2 - BBC reportWitnesses reported seeing ceremonial swords being drawn and men carrying sticks. A paramedic said people tried to rock their ambulance and open the doors as they made their way through the crowds to treat the stabbing victim. He said one man stood in front of the vehicle and said: "Leave him, let him die."

UPDATE3 - Express and Star comments :"… the people involved they arnt sikhs behaving the way they did, even worse they were grown men, what sort of example is this to set to our youngsters???… even this event will be tarnished like all the other desi events…. typical apne bande ..cant behave .."

"from what I have heard, the men who were responsible for the stabbing want to take control over the Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Smethwick and the guy who got stabbed was standing in there way. The men who committed this crime are only concerned about getting there dirty hands on the money which is given by the congregation to the gurdwara"

The Guru Nanak Gurdwara wants an "independent sovereign Sikh State of Khalistan" - which of course Sikhs once had under Ranjitsinghi, appears not to like the Indian Government, sends money to "families of Sikh Shaheeds (martyrs) of 1984 or after in India", and runs a registered political party, the Sikh Federation, "based on the "miri-piri" principle the Sikh principle that temporal and spiritual goals are indivisible."

The story of Flight 182 is a murky one. I seem to remember seeing a memorial plaque at the Old Head of Kinsale twenty years back, but can't find it on the Web. And I see the Old Head has been privatised.

well from wot i've heard, the leader of SP (the guy hu got stabbed) knocked off sum singh's pagg (turban ? LT. My Punjabi's pretty poor), which lead to the stabbin. it's something to do with gurdwara politics.

The reason assigned for this admission of foreigners into our service, is the want of men; but if there be any truth in that main principle of Mr. Malthus's admirable "Essay on Population," I apprehend it cannot be controverted, and hope that I have not misunderstood it—That population depends upon food; that, in long peopled-countries, it is only restrained from increasing, by the incapacity of the country to produce or procure a greater quantity of food: it follows that, if our country has sufficient food to give to foreigners, it has the same to give to Englishmen, and it would surely be better to give it to them, since they must be attached, by opinion, to their country; since they are, in every point, more industrious subjects, more courageous sailors, and better men; while the others have nothing to attach them to our country, they are destitute of legal principles for fighting in our defence, and have no motives for virtue but fear ...

Perhaps it may be said, that our want of these men is immediate, and that Englishmen would require to be born and bred up; but this, I conceive, furnishes the strongest objections that can be urged against the admission of foreigners into any part of our country; for, if they were not to eat the food which our labours procure, it would have been shared amongst Englishmen; consequently, a greater number than now exist would have been reared to manhood. Now, as the general repressing causes of population are vice and misery, for even in our country moral restraint represses but a small part of it, this admission of foreigners has caused a greater portion of vice and misery than would otherwise have existed in our country. As the end of legislation, and entrusting power to any men, is to promote the happiness and morality of all, our rulers, by the encouragement they have given to foreigners, have acted in direct opposition to that end for which they had power entrusted to them.

When the English character is so much superior to every other; when English opinions are so strongly tinctured with the love of liberty, and liberty is so valuable to mankind, true policy would have dictated a prohibition to strangers entering the country ...

Sunday, April 22, 2007

St George's celebrations are still outlawed in England under Draconian measures dating back to the Blairite regime. In the late 20th century, many Scottish families - the Blairs, Browns, Cooks, Darlings - settled in England, seizing the rich pasture land of north London, driving the local chieftains from the Palace of Westminster, and forcing the native population to work in servile, degrading jobs such as "Leader of the Opposition". Many still speak of the effete decadent sadistic viceroy, Lord Irvine, who had entire herds of cattle slaughtered merely so that he could use their hides to wallpaper his en suite bathroom.

And on Virginia Tech's "Gun Free Zone" (which I blogged here).I live in northern New England, which has a very low crime rate, in part because it has a high rate of gun ownership. We do have the occasional murder, however. A few years back, a couple of alienated loser teens from a small Vermont town decided they were going to kill somebody, steal his ATM cards, and go to Australia. So they went to a remote house in the woods a couple of towns away, knocked on the door, and said their car had broken down. The guy thought their story smelled funny so he picked up his Glock and told 'em to get lost. So they concocted a better story, and pretended to be students doing an environmental survey. Unfortunately, the next old coot in the woods was sick of environmentalists and chased 'em away. Eventually they figured they could spend months knocking on doors in rural Vermont and New Hampshire and seeing nothing for their pains but cranky guys in plaid leveling both barrels through the screen door. So even these idiots worked it out: Where's the nearest place around here where you're most likely to encounter gullible defenseless types who have foresworn all means of resistance?

Answer: Dartmouth College.

I'd not heard of the Dartmouth murders. Like Perry and Dick planning their Mexico trip, Jim and Rob had it all worked out. They'd even dug a grave for their prospective victims.

From Crime Library :Jim's backpack contained duct tape and rope and they had hunting knives in their boots when they walked to an isolated house on Goose Green Road. Rob would knock at the door, say his car had broken down and ask for help. Jim would crouch in the bushes, a ski mask covering his face, until the door opened.

A few miles from Chelsea, it was a home purchased by New Yorkers Andrew and Diane Patti to stay at when they wanted to experience rural life. Diane had not accompanied Andrew on this trip. He was at the home with his son Andy, 11, and their poodle Roxie.

At about ten that night, Rob severed the phone lines. Then he banged on the door.

Patti did not like the insistent sound of those knocks. A lifelong gun lover, he reached for the Glock pistol he wore on his right hip and unsnapped its safety latch. Pushing aside the blind on a window above his front door, Patti saw Rob.

Patti went to the kitchen and picked up the phone. The line was dead. He told Andy to come with him and they raced upstairs to try the other phone. It was also dead. Patti was terrified. Not only had someone cut his phone lines but the stranger wanted him to know his phone was dead. He feared it was an attempt to lure him outside into the darkness where he could be attacked.

Father and son went back downstairs where they huddled on the living room floor. As time passed, little Andy got sleepy and Patti put his son on the sofa and covered him with a blanket.

Patti sat on the floor with his gun in his hand. He was awake when daylight broke, allowing him to see that danger was gone.

Now 41, she has added to her psychology degree a husband, a highly successful business, a £500,000 two-bedroom flat in central London plus an £800,000 detached house in Hertfordshire - but still no children. She has no regrets.

"I have found my career really rewarding and absolutely stand by my decision," says Mrs Ambrose, who runs Seventy Thirty, a matchmaking company for the wealthy.

"I decided not to have children because I knew I would not be able to devote time and energy to my career. I knew my work would suffer."

Hmmm. Good looking girlie. Neither brain nor beauty will be passed on though. Adolescence lasts a long time for the childless. She is 41. Not quite in the league of an Alison Broom though.

"Susie is a big fan of alternative rock, indie rock, and grunge and funky-jazz music."

My God, they must be worried. About losing votes of course, not about what's happening to England - with its knock-on effects on Wales.

Council property should be set aside for Britons trapped on long waiting lists to help tackle rising anger at immigrants and single mothers perceived to be jumping the housing queue, says former Home Secretary David Blunkett.

The controversial call reflects fears that the BNP is successfully exploiting resentment over the housing shortage in this year's local elections. White working-class voters are said to be increasingly convinced, often wrongly, that they are waiting years to be housed because asylum seekers get preference over them, while soaring house prices have put private properties out of their reach.

While a pool of emergency housing should always be kept for those in direst need such as refugees, he said the government should now consider creating two streams of housing - one reserved for people who did not benefit from the points system. It could help reduce anger not only at immigrants but also at young women perceived to be given flats just for getting pregnant: 'The BNP play the race card, but of course it's also applied to single mothers - if you get a baby you get a house. What signals does that send?'

David Conway of Civitas disses the 'nation of immigrants' thesis. Looks like the 2001 forecast that natives would be a minority by 2100 are well out of date, and 2073 is the new date. Well inside my children's lifetime. Of course, the tipping point - when the number of native babies is less than the number of non-native - will be before that.

Labour remains committed to the view that immigration is good for the country, and the more there is, the better it will be. What is the evidence for that remarkable proposition? If you ask most ministers, they will tell you "Britain has always been a nation of immigrants". That claim is false. The evidence which refutes it is not very complicated: it consists simply in looking at the numbers.

Between 1066 and 1945 Britain actually had very few waves of immigration. By far the largest was the Irish during the 19th century and, technically, they were not immigrants, since Ireland was part of the United Kingdom. Furthermore, Irish "immigrants" never amounted to more than 3 per cent of the British population.

Numerically, the next largest group is the Jews. Official statistics record that 155,811 Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe arrived over 25 years from 1880. Their contribution to the intellectual, political and economic life of Britain has of course been enormous. But even adding the 70,000 who fled to Britain from Nazi Germany, the number of Jewish arrivals was, compared to the 50 million Britons already resident here, minute. They are certainly not enough to make Britain "a nation of immigrants".

Almost all immigrant groups never managed to reach 1 per cent of the population. The Normans, though they seized land and power, were a tiny elite. The Dutch who arrived in the 16th century were, in proportion to the whole population, a much smaller group. Even the 50,000 Huguenots from France only ever amounted to a hundredth of Britain's total population. And they arrived over a period of 50 years.

Immigration today adds 1 per cent to Britain's population every two years, or more than 5 per cent every decade. Official statistics which reveal that, in 2004 and 2005, net migration into Britain was running at around 300,000 people every year. And that number does not include the tens of thousands who arrive illegally, or who claim asylum, have their asylum claims rejected, but who are never deported.

Again and again you hear it repeated that the present levels of immigration are "nothing new", "nothing exceptional" and are in line with the proportions of immigrants who have, "throughout our history", come into Britain. The facts refute that claim so completely that I doubt any minister still believes it.

Labour, for reasons it has never fully articulated, decided in 1997 to dismantle practically all controls on immigration. The amount of immigration we have seen over the past decade has no parallel in British history. International migration into Britain now contributes around 80 per cent of Britain's annual population increase, and has done so since 1999.

In 1950, Britain's ethnic population amounted to just over 1 per cent of the total. By 2001, that figure was 8 per cent. On present trends, by 2073, the majority population of this country will either have migrated here, or be the child or grandchild of parents who did so. No past wave of immigration has ever come anywhere near having that kind of consequence.

More cheerful news. Look what the increasing number of women in higher education can do.

A third of women graduates will never have children, research has concluded. The number of highly educated women who are starting families has plummeted in the past decade, according to findings that provide the most detailed insight yet into education and fertility. While some women are making a conscious decision not to have children, others are simply leaving it too late after taking years to build their careers, buy a home and find the right partner. Graduates who do become mothers are having fewer children, and later.

If the low birth rate trend continues, then the eventual rate of childlessness among graduates now aged in their twenties is likely to be even higher than a third. The findings come from a ground-breaking study into more than 5,000 women born in 1970 and tracked throughout their lives by researchers at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, based at the Institute of Education in London.

It revealed that 40 per cent of the graduate women were childless at age 35. The researchers forecast that by the time they reach the likely end of their child-bearing years at 45, about 30 per cent will still be childless. Of a panel of older graduate women born in 1958, only 32.7 per cent were childless at 35.

The results help to explain the low birth rate which is leading to an ageing population in Britain and much of western Europe. Overall population decline is only being prevented by immigration and a higher birth rate among non-graduate women.

More British people are leaving this country than before the First World War. Yesterday's figures from the Office for National Statistics confirm what has been apparent for years: we are in the midst of the biggest inflow of migrants in history.

Until recently, Britain was a country of net emigration, not of immigration. During the period of Empire, people left in their droves to live and work in the colonies. But in the past 10 years, that has changed. People are still leaving but they are not coming back, or at least not as often as they did.

Meanwhile, there are more immigrants who are coming to stay for good. Emigration is now on the rise once more, with 207,000 British nationals leaving the country in 2004. This was the highest number since before the Great War, when more young men were leaving the country every year than died on the battlefields of Europe. While more foreign nationals are coming here and staying on, at the same time more British nationals are leaving.

Without this immigration, given the negative birth rate of indigenous people, the population would be declining. Cumulatively since 1997, 1.6 million British nationals have left the country and 806,000 have returned. At the same time, 2.93 million foreign nationals have arrived and 1.41 million have left. So, for every two Brits that leave, one returns; but for every two foreign nationals that arrive, only one leaves.

The ONS stats are here, if you have lots of time and are a spreadsheet wizard.

Overall immigration has been steadily rising since the 1990s and is now at unprecedented levels, but there has been a big change in the nationality of incomers, many of whom used to be British citizens returning after working abroad. The ONS said: ''There has been a noticeable upward trend of out-migration in recent years. This, coupled with lower numbers of in-migration of British citizens, has resulted in increasing net emigration since 2000.''

It added: ''Conversely, immigration of non-British citizens has more than doubled since the early 1990s. Out-migration of non-British citizens has been considerably lower... This has resulted in a pattern of high and increasing net immigration.''

In 2005, there was a net emigration of 107,000 British while net immigration of non-British people amounted to 292,000. In 1991, one third of all citizens entering the UK were British. By 2005, this dropped to 16 per cent.

The 2005 figure was down on 2004, which with net immigration running at 223,000 was the highest ever. When Labour took office in 1997, net immigration was around 50,000 a year, a level at which it had remained for about two decades. More than 4.3 million people born abroad were living in Britain at the time of the 2001 census, an increase of around one million compared with 1991 and two million higher than 30 years ago.

The majority of those granted settlement in 2005 were relatively young, with 116,950 under 35.

The result of a close election, whether local or national, might well be affected by nearly 1 million non - British citizens from the Commonwealth currently resident in the UK who, in a hang-over from the past, have the right to vote here, says a new report out today.

Sir Andrew said that, given the massive increase in the immigrant population in recent years, this has become an important issue – exacerbated by the encouragement of postal voting – which could mean that the outcome of a close run election could be affected by the votes of people who are not British citizens and who may not even have the right to vote. 'At present, for example, there is nothing to stop an Albanian claiming to be a Cypriot or a Somali posing as a Kenyan,' he said.

The report quotes the Electoral Commission as saying that "... the security of existing voting methods is to a considerable extent illusory, since it depends more on the honesty of the voter than on systematic measures to prevent fraud ..."

The honesty of the voter, eh ? Once upon a time there was little doubt about that. No more.